Capitol Confronts Sexual Coercion

Workshops Set On Harassment

Capitol Confronts Issue Of Sexual Harassment

Rumors of a male legislator molesting a female staff member reached Naomi Cohen late last year, not long after the General Assembly published the policy she had written on sexual harassment.

Cohen, then a deputy House majority leader, sought out the woman, who confirmed the whispers: A lawmaker had grabbed her breasts after a reception at the Legislative Office Building.

After first explaining her options, which included filing a complaint with the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, Cohen asked the woman what she intended to do.

"The bottom line was that she intended to do nothing because she didn't want to lose her job," Cohen said. "She didn't want to be considered a whiner or complainer."

Such blatant examples of sexual harassment are said to be rare at the Capitol. But female staff members and lobbyists say that more subtle forms of harassment are commonplace, and the victims rarely complain.

Staff members have no job protection at the General Assembly, and lobbyists say they cannot afford to risk making trouble for legislators who control the fate of legislation sought by their clients.

Against that backdrop, state lawmakers will be offered next week the two hours of sexual harassment awareness training that they mandated last year for all Connecticut employers with 50 or more workers.

The question on the minds of many women is: Will the legislators meet the requirements of the law, which says that all supervisors must be trained? Most have at least part-time supervisory responsibility for an aide or intern.

"It will be interesting to see what happens," said Cohen, who did not seek re-election last year after a decade in office. "Will legislators go to the training in larger numbers than went to the ethics training?"

A seminar in January on the state ethics code attracted fewer

than 30 of 187 legislators, and women at the Capitol say they doubt attendance will be much better at the workshop dealing with sexual harassment.

The session will be run by Catherine Blinder of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, who says attendance will be in the legislators' best interests.

"I think there is a high level of political risk in not understanding this issue," Blinder said.

Doubters need only look at the outrage women displayed when the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee was slow to take seriously Anita Hill's harassment complaints against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Legislators also should be aware, Blinder said, that the public resents what it sometimes sees as legislators' exempting themselves from the mandates they impose on private employers.

"People who show up for these sessions will be making a very public statement that they don't think they should be excluded," she said. "That will make their constituents very happy, particularly female constituents."

Blinder will offer the training Wednesday morning and repeat the class a week later. She already has offered similar, although slightly longer, workshops for legislative staff members and Capitol police.

House Speaker Thomas D. Ritter, D-Hartford, said he is informing the 86 Democrats in the House that they should consider attendance at one of the two sessions to be mandatory.

"I will make sure every member of my caucus attends," Ritter said.

But other legislative leaders said they believe they only can encourage, not require, attendance by other lawmakers, who are elected officials and not their employees.

"I don't think I am in a position to order them," said House Minority Leader Edward C. Krawiecki Jr., R-Bristol. "I can't even order them to attend our own caucus meetings."

With the alllegations of harassment against U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Orgeon, in the news, some legislators predict that their colleagues will realize that skipping the training leaves them open to charges of insensitivity.

Others are not so sure.

No one in Connecticut's legislature has been the subject of a high-profile sexual harassment case such as Packwood's, but lawmakers have been privately reprimanded in recent years.

Sen. Richard J. Balducci, D-Newington, who was House speaker from 1989 to 1993, said that he privately rebuked at least two House members who had been accused of harassing female staff members.

At the insistence of the women involved, he took no public action.

One of the cases involved a man who persistently made lewd comments to female staff members. The other was the legislator accused of grabbing a female staff member in the Legislative Office Building last fall.

"I confronted the individual [legislator] involved and told him I didn't want to see him anywhere near her again," Balducci said.

The legislator at first denied touching the woman, but he later said he had been drinking and might have behaved inappropriately, Balducci said.

Female staff members and lobbyists, who agreed to be interviewed only if they were not identified, told stories of legislators' pressuring staff members and the college interns who work at the legislature for dates.